Third World memories and New Orleans

Packing the same breathtakingly biblical power to leave cities humbled and humans crushed in its wake, Hurricane Katrina quickly took on the macabre mantle of "America's tsunami."

But, having witnessed the awful aftermath of both, I can tell you that, in some ways and for many reasons, the tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean in December was the kinder killer.

It left nearly 300,000 people dead or missing in 11 nations from Indonesia to Somalia, but the tsunami's monster wave came and went and then was gone--along with almost everything in its path. At least in Sri Lanka, the little teardrop island off the southern coast of India, where I reported in the days that followed the tsunami, the immediate result was often a dry, heartbreakingly clean slate.

Katrina will claim far fewer lives over a far smaller area, but her waters came and stayed and still remain, promising to torture the crippled city of New Orleans and its surrounding parishes for months to come.

The differences I'm finding are sadly striking.

In the aftermath of the tsunami, I didn't see people stranded in houses, hungry and thirsty, a week later. I didn't see people neck deep in water and floating their belongings on beach rafts.

I didn't see evidence of armed gangs in ravaged towns terrorizing the survivors.

There was little violence and even less looting, probably because most victims had nothing to loot. For sure, there was some scrapping over aid allocation between Hindus and Buddhists, but also for sure, there was less bureaucracy involved.

The images I saw in New Orleans, I'm ashamed to say, were far more like those from what we imagine to be a Third World nation than most of what I saw in Sri Lanka.

The contrast between Sri Lanka and New Orleans is particularly vivid when I compare the conditions of the shelters.

Most of the tsunami's survivors headed for Buddhist monasteries, usually built on high ground. Scores of them became instant sanctuaries. Presided over by often preternaturally serene monks in saffron robes, the shelters were crowded and the conditions were relatively primitive.

But, the atmosphere was calm and the people seemed well cared for.

The dark, fetid chaos of the Superdome in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina makes for a sad comparison. Maybe there was no help for it. Maybe the situation seemed even worse because we never expected to see scenes like that in America.

But, as I saw, there is a big difference between a natural disaster that focuses its wrath on small fishing villages and a smattering of coastal beach resorts, as it did in Sri Lanka, and one that targets a major urban center.

In Sri Lanka, aid came relatively swiftly.

Many international aid agencies, such as CARE and UNICEF, had staff and supply depots all around the region and quickly put distribution plans into effect. Even the government moved surprisingly fast, getting officials and aid into even some of the most, but not all, remote regions in a relatively timely fashion.

In Sri Lanka, cleanup and rebuilding began almost at once. The residents who survived didn't seem to count on any outside help. Old and young, they were out there, dragging fallen palms and beached boats off the roads and starting to clear the ruins of their homes long before any official assistance arrived.

Of course, most of the houses destroyed in Sri Lanka were humble affairs, sometimes even huts, made of wood or concrete blocks, far easier to replace than glass office buildings and elegant old mansions.

As one approaches New Orleans these days, it is like passing through a modern, miracle mile version of Pompeii. The mandatory evacuation in the surrounding suburbs has erased evidence of people everywhere except for the constant and voluminous traffic of rescue vehicles trundling up and down the authorized roads into the city.

Many of the houses and businesses on the outskirts of New Orleans are intact or mostly intact, as if life was abruptly interrupted and the people might return at any moment.

There are miles and miles of eerily empty shopping centers, McDonald's restaurants with their golden arches missing or askew, billboards with their messages scrubbed clean by Katrina's rain and winds, cars stopped at crazy angles by the sides of the road.

Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, escaped the tsunami virtually unscathed. The airport never really closed. The government and police never stopped functioning.

In New Orleans, it is the opposite. Once arguably the liveliest, splashiest city in the country, it is now a virtual ghost town, seemingly drained of color.

The bawdy glamor is gone. Instead of tourists trawling the French Quarter with drinks in hand, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne patrol some of the streets, M-16 rifles on their shoulders and red berets on their heads.

Until 1st Army commander Lt. Gen. Russel Honore told them differently, many soldiers had been holding their rifles at the ready, pointed at civilians. I never saw anything like that in Sri Lanka. Even the Tamil Tigers in the north of the country brokered a temporary truce with the government during the worst of the crisis.

And, even in Sri Lanka's hardest-hit eastern Ampara district, where the poorest of the poor walked amid the palm frond-strewn ruins of their little homes, I never felt afraid, even at nightfall.

The other evening, I got lost leaving New Orleans. The sun was setting. It was a desolate area where idle men lingered under an overpass and few cars passed. And, for the first time in any of my visits to New Orleans over the years, I felt afraid.